Putting the likes of the super-funded aside (Color, anyone?), most early-stage startups operate on tight budgets and spend their dollars sparingly. A bevy of web services have made start-up costs all the more affordable, but now there’s the conundrum of nearly too much choice.

Their answers, in aggregate, speak to the growing trend in startups moving toward predominately cloud-based operations. The most popular selections also highlight the rising stars (Dropbox) and impressive veterans (Paypal and Salesforce) in the business-to-business services sector.

So what’s hot among startups these days? Google Apps, Google Analytics and Quickbooks each garnered a majority of the votes in the email, accounting and web analytics categories respectively. Salesforce bested its CRM ...